Busy Like A Really Busy Bee

Seems like there's never a dull moment around here. We had another pretty eventful weekend, and I have photos to prove it! Let's start with Friday, when our beloved car had her service (of course my car is a "she"), leaving us immobile for the entire day. You can imagine how happy we were when a friend invited us to Šmarna gora, a small hill here in Ljubljana. Unfortunately our car wasn't done in time for our RO class, so we practiced some new tricks at home and went to bed early before the Saturday's trial.

The first trial for Eukanuba cup 2008 was in Gornja Radgona, about two hours from Ljubljana. There were many Hungarian and Austrian teams, since it's close(r) to the borders. Our first run was bad, but it was a clean run. In the second run, however, we got many faults. Since the courses were very difficult many teams were disqualified and we still finished on 2nd place, but that's no excuse for my poor handling. Xsara did great, and as soon as I start to trust her more, our trial performance will have a lot better chance.

I hope my ring nerves calm down by June, because I entered us into IABC (International All Breed's Cup), which will be held in Hungary. It was kind of a spur of the moment thing, but I think it will be a lot of fun. There will be great judges, many runs and many different breeds, so I'm already looking forward to it.

Most of our agility buddies went to a trial in Croatia on Sunday, so we rediscovered the joy of having to work on Sundays. Unable to attend the trial, we went hiking to the spring of Kamniška Bistrica. It would have been great to go to the trial, but this was a good substitute. Here are some of my favourite photos of this trip - you can click on a photo for better quality:





Thanks to Alja and Chappi for our photos from the trial! Alja also took this cute picture of Xsara on Saturday:

Forester's Valley

We were discovering the beauties of our country a little further yesterday. We went to Logarska dolina in Solčavsko. There was still some snow in the valley and a lot of it on the mountains. We could see some snowslides higher up. The weather was perfect all the way, so we really enjoyed roaming around the woods and streams. I was surprised to see how well Xsara behaved being in the woods off-leash. She was constantly paying attention to me and even when I saw that she scented a trail, her recall was absolutely perfect.

We went from the valley to waterfall Rinka. It was funny to see how many people drove there instead of walking, I just don't understand them. They don't know how much they have missed. But that was actually good news for us because we hardly met any people on the footpath - in fact, we only met one couple who gave up half-way to the waterfall and returned to the valley. So Xsara could remain off-leash for the entire time.

We decided we will go hiking somewhere higher for our next trip - this time we only had half-day off because I had to go to work afterwards. I already have so many ideas for the next weekend without trials - which will be in June, by the way :) Hopefully we will find a way to do it sooner. In the meantime, we will continue with little trips that can be equally fantastic.

Anyway, as a result, Xsara was happy and tired, so she just crawled in her bed (and transferred to my bed when the lights went off). We have agility and RO today but the weather-people say we will have storms in the afternoon so it's possible our classes could be cancelled. If that happens, we will have to find something else to do. Any ideas?

Little Furry Thief's Outing

We had another case of cleptomania this week. It was completely my fault because I left an opened baggy of dog treats on the counter and went to work. I don't know any dog who would resist such temptation. As you can see in the photo, Xsara felt extreme guilt after stealing and eating all of them. Lucky for me, it was a small bag this time so her tummy is fine.

This weekend we decided to go to Gorenjska, which is the part of Slovenia North from Ljubljana (it's where Xsara was born). We went to a very popular touristic destination - Bled, famous for the castle, the lake and the only island in Slovenia. One of the most interesting things for Xsara was being so close to the ducks. After the walk we went to visit my friend in Dovje and the countryside was so beautiful that I decided to make a slide show. If you want to know a little more about how Slovenia looks, just click here.

Apparently the "remix" function of Photobucket is experiencing some problems (and I'm never using it again), so if you can't open the film, you can see the pictures in an old-fashioned slideshow in my album - this version has no music and effects, but the pictures are the same.

We were out the whole day and Xsara was so tired that she went straight to bed. She is snoring incredibly loudly right now, apparently dreaming of something very interesting because she is barking in her sleep. Every time she goes to sleep because she is tired and not bored, I feel like a good Mom.